PIE Inc.

Praetoria Imperialis Excubitoris

Subscriber X is handicapped and can't work therefore not having much left over cash. He does have time to grind missions or incursions with friends. Subscriber Y is a 45-60 hour a week worker who doesn't have much time to earn ISK to pay for his play style. Subscriber X purchases game time from Subscriber Y using ISK as the currency. Where does CCP not get money in this?

that is broken logic right there. You evoke sandbox, then break it for RL reasons? Plex should have been standardized by CCP with no player profit from the start. That way no one can 'fund' themselves using RL money - that is PtW.

State War Academy

Caldari State

Also an amusing fact of PLEX; in North America it is not (legally) possible to earn an amount of money per hour at a job that would take more hours to put together a month of subscription in comparison to the hours it takes to farm for a PLEX for the average user. Before the mass manufacturers and station monkeys who "make a bil per week" chime in, you are not part of this group. These are the mission runners, the miners, the incursion runners, null sec ratters, etc. In Canada it takes less than two hours at minimum wage to pay for a month of subscription, it's not possible to earn 400 million isk in less than two hours on average from the typical sources of ISK. I'm aware this fact is painfully obvious, but I find it amusing anyway. People will slave away doing ISK farming missions for hours instead of not eating out a couple times a month.

Good for people with tight budgets who still want to play EVE though.

This is why I bought PLEX shortly after starting a year ago. I had worked for a couple hours to finance the 2M for my first cruiser. Then I did the math and realized that was worth about 10¢. That is roughly one minute of minimum wage labor in the US.

Universal Express

First, the basic math: EVERY PLEX IN THE GAME was paid for with REAL money. Therefore, whether each player pays for their own sub, or player one pays for 2 subs and player two pays with the plex player 1 bought, ccp got paid for 2 subs that month. Stop saying that CCP loses loads of money because people pay with plex, as if plex are magically seeded into the game for free by CCP.

Plex increases the player base. The whole "plex increases player base, but with people who don't pay RL money so ccp loses out" is a load of crap. Yes, plex does increase player base with players who don't pay with RL money, but ccp makes money on it because someone else IS paying RL money for them. Just making up numbers, lets say with no plex system CCP has a subscription base of 200,000 subscribers. With a plex system, that base jumps to 250,000 subscribers, 50,000 of which pay only with plex. But CCP isn't giving out 50,000 free subscriptions. The original paying 200,000 subscribers are paying for an additional 50,000 subscriptions. CCP gets paid for an extra 50,000 subs because of this plex system (with these made up numbers). CCP doesn't care who pays the subs, as long as each sub is paid for by someone.

As far as the "losing money due to discounts"...

They do that as kind of a gamble that by lowering prices, they will get more subs. If they get enough extra subs, they more than make up for the discounted price, therefore making more money. It can be a gamble because if people don't buy more subs (plex), then they lose due to the discount. Basic example (not real figures): 10 players spend $15 each for 1 plex. CCP makes $150. CCP gambles and cuts prices to $10 / plex to try and sell more. If CCP is correct, say they end up selling 20 players plex for $10 each. That's $200 to CCP ($50 profit due to discount). If CCP is wrong, they may only sell 2 additional plex (12 total), giving them only $120, a $30 loss due to the discount. Keep in mind plex = 1 month subscription ($15 estimated value). So by giving a discount, CCP gambles that the discounted rate * new sub base > $15 * original sub base.

And lets not forget about someone who puts 10 billion worth of plex into a kestrel or other ship (idk, roughly 25 plex), then gets ganked or otherwise explodes somehow, and the plex do not drop (are destroyed). That's 25 plex * estimated $15 paid to CCP per plex = $375 paid to CCP for game time that will NEVER be redeemed, i.e. someone just donated 400 bucks to ccp by ganking some dumbass.

Minmatar Republic

First, the basic math: EVERY PLEX IN THE GAME was paid for with REAL money. Therefore, whether each player pays for their own sub, or player one pays for 2 subs and player two pays with the plex player 1 bought, ccp got paid for 2 subs that month. Stop saying that CCP loses loads of money because people pay with plex, as if plex are magically seeded into the game for free by CCP.

Plex increases the player base. The whole "plex increases player base, but with people who don't pay RL money so ccp loses out" is a load of crap. Yes, plex does increase player base with players who don't pay with RL money, but ccp makes money on it because someone else IS paying RL money for them. Just making up numbers, lets say with no plex system CCP has a subscription base of 200,000 subscribers. With a plex system, that base jumps to 250,000 subscribers, 50,000 of which pay only with plex. But CCP isn't giving out 50,000 free subscriptions. The original paying 200,000 subscribers are paying for an additional 50,000 subscriptions. CCP gets paid for an extra 50,000 subs because of this plex system (with these made up numbers). CCP doesn't care who pays the subs, as long as each sub is paid for by someone.

As far as the "losing money due to discounts"...

They do that as kind of a gamble that by lowering prices, they will get more subs. If they get enough extra subs, they more than make up for the discounted price, therefore making more money. It can be a gamble because if people don't buy more subs (plex), then they lose due to the discount. Basic example (not real figures): 10 players spend $15 each for 1 plex. CCP makes $150. CCP gambles and cuts prices to $10 / plex to try and sell more. If CCP is correct, say they end up selling 20 players plex for $10 each. That's $200 to CCP ($50 profit due to discount). If CCP is wrong, they may only sell 2 additional plex (12 total), giving them only $120, a $30 loss due to the discount. Keep in mind plex = 1 month subscription ($15 estimated value). So by giving a discount, CCP gambles that the discounted rate * new sub base > $15 * original sub base.

And lets not forget about someone who puts 10 billion worth of plex into a kestrel or other ship (idk, roughly 25 plex), then gets ganked or otherwise explodes somehow, and the plex do not drop (are destroyed). That's 25 plex * estimated $15 paid to CCP per plex = $375 paid to CCP for game time that will NEVER be redeemed, i.e. someone just donated 400 bucks to ccp by ganking some dumbass.

bolded..

Lets be more real.Just some numbers i make up and i think those are more accurate. 200k paying subscribers .. with PLEX to play there is 500k paying customers.

Without PLEX you go down to at best 200k paying subsribers but more likely to 120k. So CCP will ultimately lose about 380k paying customers. So CCP will lose an huge chunk of money.

Bleu Water Holdings

classic case of inflation. eve has no real isk sinks. its only going to go higher. deal with it.

First REAL reason that i have ever seen someone give (even if by mistake) as to why there either needs to be more people out in 0.0 or they need to attach leeches to people whom live in highsec's wallets (Isk sinks up the wazoo - Sov, Sov Upgrades, Pos's and their fuel, Rent, ship replacement because you loose at least 5 a day if you dont sit in station all day and go out and pvp like a drunken man with no fear.... i could go on..)

But honestly....

Here's how you afford to play eve.

You get a maccas meal or take out meal multiple times a week yes? Decent meal is about $7-10 yea?

Virtues Corporation

Subscriber X is handicapped and can't work therefore not having much left over cash. He does have time to grind missions or incursions with friends. Subscriber Y is a 45-60 hour a week worker who doesn't have much time to earn ISK to pay for his play style. Subscriber X purchases game time from Subscriber Y using ISK as the currency. Where does CCP not get money in this?

that is broken logic right there. You evoke sandbox, then break it for RL reasons? Plex should have been standardized by CCP with no player profit from the start. That way no one can 'fund' themselves using RL money - that is PtW.

Yes. EVE is actually a pay-to-win game. The difference is that the amount of "pay-to-win" is inherently limited by the number of players willing to pay ISK to sub their accounts with PLEX. It places an upper bound on the effectiveness of PtW, because an infinitely rich player can not buy an infinite number of PLEX to generate an infinite amount of ISK out of nowhere. The demand for PLEX is intrinsically finite, and thus there is a finite limit to the amount of "advantage" you can buy.

FURTHERMORE, even though there is "PtW", selling PLEX doesn't inherently grant you access to any items/activities that could not be obtained by playing the game. Therefore, PLEX isn't "PtW" in the sense of selling power to players, it is "PtW" in the sense of selling "accelerated gameplay" to players. And the people selling this "accelerated gameplay" is not CCP, but the players themselves.

The core difference between PLEX and other MT systems is that *EVERY* single advantage afforded by PLEX had to have been created by players playing the game in some way, shape or form. Every single ship had to be built, every single officer item had to be looted, every single last .01 ISK had to be rewarded through bounties/mission rewards/insurance payouts/etc...

Oruze Cruise

White Stag Exit Bag

So . . . basically OP has never heard of supply & demand or inflation.This is nearly as bad as the people who complained about CCP giving out free aurum when they thought it would be better to give out free isk.

someone is manipulating the price of plex, at first i thought it was ccp.

who would have motives to do such a thing? and why?

Because making your enemies spend real money on Internet spaceships when they don't want to is uber meta gaming.

nice cover sonny. i hope they take away your accounts if you are up to what i think you lot are. and inform the tax man to make sure your paying revenue on all your incomes.

What?

I was implying intentionally driving up the plex price outside of the price bracket of the average grunt in a 0.0 alliance, thus forcing them to choose between:1. activating a credit card subscription2. attempt to raise isk at the expense of alliance cta's3. get feed up and quit alliance to go make isk else where

Edit: anyway item turnover seems pretty stable as prices lift... ...we all know what that means. Iam interested to see if they can hit 500.

Double Edit: when the winter patch is released and the awesome turns to awful, this bubble will pop.